General Practitioners

Department of Health written question – answered at on 20 November 2017.

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Photo of Henry Smith Henry Smith Conservative, Crawley

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to increase capacity in general practice in (a) Crawley constituency and (b) England.

Photo of Steve Brine Steve Brine The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health

In April 2016, the General Practice Forward View set out a package of investment in general practice. This included a number of reforms which will increase capacity in general practice through recruitment and retention of general practitioners (GPs) and the wider workforce, and investment in extended access to GP services and the Time for Care programme.

By 2020 the Government has committed to 5,000 additional GPs and 5,000 other staff in general practice; and by March 2019 everyone having access to GP services, including sufficient routine appointments at evenings and weekends to meet locally determined demand.

The Time for Care programme will spread awareness of innovations that will help release capacity in general practice and facilitate local change programmes to implement them. Examples of these innovations include active signposting and developing the team. It is estimated that most practices can expect to release about 10% of GP time. The Time for Care programme provides support for groups of practices to implement their choice of the actions. To date, this has covered 115 clinical commissioning groups, available to 3,974 practices.

In 2016/17 £2,000,000 of funding was awarded to NHS Crawley Clinical Commissioning Group to improve local GP practice resilience and sustainability and improve access to local GP services for patients.

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